Status of Fedora-Medical

[Simon Slater]

G'day all,

I've been tied up for a while so have lost touch a bit.  I have a new laptop 
that needs Linux.  Is Fedora-Medical ready to use or test?

[susmit shannigrahi]

Hi,

Thanks for your interest.
We are still lacking contributors so your help is appreciated.

Fedora Medical is still not available in a spin form, however, you
can find the packages:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673841

Thanks.

[Andreas Tille]

Hi,

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 01:02:42PM -0700, susmit shannigrahi wrote:
> Fedora Medical is still not available in a spin form, however, you
> can find the packages:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673841

Just for the sake of interest as a Debian user (I never touched any
other Linux distribution since my bloody beginners days with slackware):
What does the page you quoted really mean?  There are some Depends
listed but some of them are striked out.  It's a bit unclear to me what
I finally get.

Does the metapackage technique exist in Fedora?  In Debian you have some
comparable (hmmm perhaps not, I'd regard it more informative but I'm
biased) web page which tells the user what is inside Debian Med

http://debian-med.alioth.debian.org/tasks/

and if you follow those links you get an overview about what we call
tasks.  Everything which is listed in green color can be installed with
one click / command line by installing the according metapackage (there
is one metapackage per task as it is listed on the overview page above
because all the web pages are generated out of the same data as it is
used for creating the metapackage).  I have no idea whether this
principle might work under Fedora, but at least the Debian Med project
was growing while using this technique step by step without having some
real separate "release".  The user just installs Debian and the med-*
metapackages he needs on top of it.

Kind regards

Andreas.

[Christoph Wickert]

Am Mittwoch, den 23.11.2011, 14:27 +0100 schrieb Andreas Tille:
> Hi,
>
> On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 01:02:42PM -0700, susmit shannigrahi wrote:
> > Fedora Medical is still not available in a spin form, however, you
> > can find the packages:
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673841
>
> Just for the sake of interest as a Debian user (I never touched any
> other Linux distribution since my bloody beginners days with slackware):
> What does the page you quoted really mean?  There are some Depends
> listed but some of them are striked out.  It's a bit unclear to me what
> I finally get.

The bug does not refer to a package but is a tracker bug used to track
all the reviews of medial packages in Fedora. They appear as
dependencies of this bug (not of a package!) in the list. Once a review
was finished and the package is available in Fedora, the one more bug is
striked out.
> Does the metapackage technique exist in Fedora?

Yes, but it's strongly encouraged. We only have a few metapackages and
they are only used for packages that are built from one source, e.g.
git-all that installs app packages built from the git source rpm.

Instead we use package groups, this is pretty similar to the concepts of
tasks in Debian. Groups can contain mandatory, default and optional
packages, but currently we have don't have a medical group yet.

HTH,
Christoph

[Simon Slater]

On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:02:42 susmit shannigrahi wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for your interest.
> We are still lacking contributors so your help is appreciated.
>
> Fedora Medical is still not available in a spin form, however, you
> can find the packages:
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673841
>
> Thanks.

Specifically what sort of work is left to be done?  Is there a to-do site 
with progress etc?

I am no coder, but may be able to do some things, or get an employee to 
do some.  With 100 things to do, 101 doesn'tmake much difference I suppose ...

[Sebastian Hilbert]

On Friday, November 25, 2011 02:05:11 AM Simon Slater wrote:
> On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:02:42 susmit shannigrahi wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > Thanks for your interest.
> > We are still lacking contributors so your help is appreciated.
> >
> > Fedora Medical is still not available in a spin form, however, you
> > can find the packages:
> > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673841
> >
> > Thanks.
>
> Specifically what sort of work is left to be done?  Is there a to-do site
> with progress etc?
>
> I am no coder, but may be able to do some things, or get an employee to
> do some.  With 100 things to do, 101 doesn'tmake much difference I suppose
> ...

Dependending on what impact you would like to make there are many aspects left 
open.

if you want to target administrators: make it possible to install software 
available already. In other words provide packages for as many software 
proeducts in this field as possible. The more software packages are there the 
more attractive any distribution will be to the enduser. There has been great 
effort to get this started

if you want to target developers: find ways to make the platform attractive. 
Create and maintain any environment and infrastructe plus workflow where 
potential packagers and developers will get started quickly. Most of the time 
this involves collecting ressources available already and making them 
available in one central space (webpage and whatnot)

if you want to target endusers:
solicit feedback from endusers who do not even know there is software for them 
available. Make them aware of the platform and software. Get the word out. Ask 
them which software they would like most and put priority on getting this 
packaged. Create an easy to use test environment. Provide Fedora spins, 
videos, vmware images - anything that will enable a user to testdrive your 
"product" without getting turned away by complex technical hurdles.

But if you really want to make a difference for healthcare put effort into 
getting people from different distributions together to share their work. 
Currently we are duplicating work in Debian-med, Fedora-medical and openSUSE-
medical. What a waste of human ressources.

GNU/Linux definetly needs one common packages format.

Regards,
Sebastian

[Simon Slater]

On Fri, 25 Nov 2011 18:55:15 Sebastian Hilbert wrote:
> On Friday, November 25, 2011 02:05:11 AM Simon Slater wrote:
> > On Wed, 23 Nov 2011 07:02:42 susmit shannigrahi wrote:
> > > Hi,
> > >
> > > Thanks for your interest.
> > > We are still lacking contributors so your help is appreciated.
> > >
> > > Fedora Medical is still not available in a spin form, however, you
> > > can find the packages:
> > > https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=673841
> > >
> > > Thanks.
> >
> > Specifically what sort of work is left to be done?  Is there a to-do
> >    site
> >
> > with progress etc?
> >
> > I am no coder, but may be able to do some things, or get an employee to
> >
> > do some.  With 100 things to do, 101 doesn'tmake much difference I
> > suppose ...
>
> Dependending on what impact you would like to make there are many aspects
> left open.
>
> if you want to target administrators: make it possible to install software
> available already. In other words provide packages for as many software
> proeducts in this field as possible. The more software packages are there
> the more attractive any distribution will be to the enduser. There has
> been great effort to get this started

I have sat in on a Fedora-Classroom on packaging so I know a bit about what is 
involved, but never done it.
> if you want to target developers: find ways to make the platform
> attractive. Create and maintain any environment and infrastructe plus
> workflow where potential packagers and developers will get started
> quickly. Most of the time this involves collecting ressources available
> already and making them available in one central space (webpage and
> whatnot)

Am working on getting web sites up and running for our business, so may be of 
help here, but again have never done it before.
> if you want to target endusers:
> solicit feedback from endusers who do not even know there is software for
> them available. Make them aware of the platform and software. Get the word
> out. Ask them which software they would like most and put priority on
> getting this packaged. Create an easy to use test environment. Provide
> Fedora spins, videos, vmware images - anything that will enable a user to
> testdrive your "product" without getting turned away by complex technical
> hurdles.

I will be going to a conference of the top 10% of veterinary clinics in the 
country in a couple of weeks and know a few medicos, so may be of help there.
> But if you really want to make a difference for healthcare put effort into
> getting people from different distributions together to share their work.
> Currently we are duplicating work in Debian-med, Fedora-medical and
> openSUSE- medical. What a waste of human ressources.

Any common forums existing at the moment?
> GNU/Linux definetly needs one common packages format.
>
> Regards,
> Sebastian
> _______________________________________________
> Medical-sig mailing list
> [e-mail]
> https://fedorahosted.org/mailman/listinfo/medical-sig

[Andreas Tille]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2011 at 08:24:55PM +1100, Simon Slater wrote:
> > But if you really want to make a difference for healthcare put effort into
> > getting people from different distributions together to share their work.
> > Currently we are duplicating work in Debian-med, Fedora-medical and
> > openSUSE- medical. What a waste of human ressources.
>
> Any common forums existing at the moment?

Feel free to "missuse" the Debian Med list to also discuss not so Debian
centric questions.  We are open and like to give help to packagers of
other distributions.

Kind regards

Andreas.

[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-med/